Revenue Streams - The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-First Century - page 120

But many smaller water-conveyance projects are under way in the West, some of
which have proven successful and nearly all of which have led to disputes.
Regulatory approval for a new pipeline is often the key to promoting real estate de-
velopment. Since the 1980s, as increasing numbers of people relocated from the wet
Northeast to the dry Southwest, economic and political pressure has built on local gov-
ernments to approve new water pipelines. The rising costs and divisive politics of water
have increasingly led state agencies to partner with private investors, or to step away al-
together, allowing private water companies to build water pipelines of their own. Such
projects enable developers to build where there is little or no water; they bring wa-
ter to the people, instead of the other way around. The effect has been to promote the
growth of cities in dry regions—such as Sparks, Nevada, St. George, Utah, and Yuma,
Arizona—which were once considered too dry to sustain large populations.
According to the EPA, the United States and Canada now have approximately 1 mil-
lion miles of pipeline and aqueducts, enough to circle the earth forty times, and entre-
preneurs have filed applications to build more.
Some cities have a nearly magnetic attraction for those who dream of building water
pipelines. Such a place is Denver, Colorado. The city and its suburbs are expanding, as
are Boulder and Fort Collins, to the north, and Colorado Springs, to the south. These
cities are all located on the Front Range, the dry eastern side of the Continental Divide
(so-called because it marks the line that separates the watersheds of the Atlantic Ocean
and Pacific Ocean). While 88 percent of Colorado's population is on the eastern side of
the Divide, most of its water lies on the western side.
In 2009, Denver had 610,345 residents, making it the nation's twenty-fourth most
populous city and the second-largest city in the Mountain West, after Phoenix. Denver's
twelve-county Combined Statistical Area had about 3.1 million residents. And the
eighteen-county Front Range Urban Corridor had an estimated population of 4.3 mil-
lion. Denver Water, the city's water supplier, is one of the oldest water utilities in the
West. It operates a complex system of reservoirs, canals, tunnels, and treatment plants
to supply water to over a million people.
Transmountain diversions such as Roberts Tunnel , a twenty-three-mile-long
pipeline bored through the Rockies, bring water from the Western Slope to Denver and
its satellites on the Front Range.
Such major infrastructure does not come easily or cheaply. While national water fees
average about $458 per residence a year, some of Denver's expanding suburbs charge
$10,000 or more for providing water to a new home. The town of Louisville charges
$20,000 per house, and Broom-field charges $24,424 per house per year. Such high fees
have many causes, most notably Colorado's uniquely rigid water-court system. And as